Friday, July 18, 2014

Wii U sales up 233% in June 2014, MK8 Top Selling Game

The NPD results are in for June 2014, and the Wii U showed huge improvement in hardware sales and a big hit in Mario Kart 8, being the highest selling single sku game overall consoles and handhelds.

Nintendo PR:

After firing out of the gate at the end of
May, Mario Kart 8 had an even stronger second lap. The game was the top-selling
physical software SKU in the U.S. in June, and sold more than 470,000 physical
and digital units. This brings its lifetime total to more than 885,000 units in
the U.S. alone. Mario Kart 8 is also driving new momentum for the Wii U
platform and its library of great titles, which includes an industry-best 15
games with a Metacritic score of 85 or higher. Sales of hardware and software in
June 2014 were up 233 percent and 373 percent, respectively, over June 2013.
For the first half of the year, total sales of Wii U hardware and software have
increased by 48 percent and 129 percent, respectively, over the same period in
2013.

“These results reinforce the power of the Mario Kart franchise and speak to a
bright future for the Wii U platform,” said Scott Moffitt, Nintendo of
America’s executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. “History has shown
that Mario Kart games tend to have an extremely long tail. We fully expect
Mario Kart 8 to continue to drive momentum for our hardware and software
business through the holidays and into the foreseeable future.”

Nintendo 3DS also had a strong month: Hardware sales in June increased by more
than 55 percent over sales in May, and Tomodachi Life sold more than 175,000
combined physical and digital units after launching on June 6.

Looking ahead to the rest of 2014, Wii U has a great lineup of upcoming games
and amiibo, Nintendo’s foray into the toys-to-life category, that will help
Nintendo build on its Mario Kart 8 momentum. Notable titles on the way include:
Hyrule Warriors (Sept. 26), Bayonetta 2 (October), Super Smash Bros. for Wii U
(Holiday) and Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (Holiday). Likewise, three of the
most anticipated games of the year are coming exclusively to Nintendo 3DS in
2014: Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS (Oct. 3) and Pokémon Omega Ruby and
Pokémon Alpha Sapphire (Nov. 21).

*Data regarding physical sales of games in June are from the NPD Group. Data
regarding digital downloads of games and combined physical/digital life-to-date
numbers are from Nintendo’s internal sales figures. All numbers, unless
otherwise stated, are specific to the United States only.

With July and August being slim on new Wii U games, hopefully Mario Kart 8 can continue to push Wii U sales without much in new releases. Once September-December hit, you can expect Wii U sales to go up by a large margin.